When you can actually afford to hire, why the rule of thumb is only a starting point, and how to start buying back your time before burnout does it for you.
One of the questions I get asked the most is some version of this: how do I know when I can actually afford to hire somebody?
It’s a good question, and there’s a rule of thumb floating around this industry that gets close. But I want to walk you past the rule of thumb tonight, because the real answer is bigger than a number. It’s about how much your time is worth, and how to start buying some of it back before you run yourself into the ground.
The rule of thumb, and why it’s only that
I was talking this through with a friend who knows this industry well, and the general guideline goes like this. For roughly every $300,000 in revenue, you can support one staff person. So at $300K, you are that person. At $450K, you can maybe carry half a person. At $600K, you can add another. And on it goes.
It’s a fine place to start. But that is all it is, a starting point. You still have to decide what actually works for your company and what you can genuinely afford. I know owners who choose to take a smaller paycheck themselves so they can put someone in the office, because the peace of mind is worth more to them than the extra money. And peace of mind is worth a lot. Only you can decide what you’re willing to trade for it.
Have you actually looked at your numbers?
Before you decide you can’t afford help, go through your P&L line by line. And I mean a real one, kept current and done right. (If yours is a mess, or you just don’t have the time for it, get a bookkeeper. I’ve got an amazing one I’m happy to point you toward if she’s taking new clients.)
When you go through it, ask what else could flex. Because at the end of the day your sanity is priceless, and sometimes the line item that frees it up is hiding in plain sight.
Do the math on your own time
Here’s the exercise that changed how I think about this. There’s a book called Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell that put good words to it. The idea isn’t brand new, plenty of people have circled this before, Who Not How is another solid one, and honestly there’s nothing new under the sun. Most good ideas are just an old truth repackaged until it finally clicks. This one clicked for me.
The premise is simple. Figure out what you pay yourself an hour, or what you honestly value your time at. Then look at how many hours you spend on tasks that are not CEO tasks. I’ll call them menial, and I don’t mean that with any disrespect, I just mean the work that does not require the owner.
Say you value your time at $100 an hour, and you spend four hours handwriting thank you cards, because handwriting thank you cards eats time. That is $400 of your time to write thank you cards. Could someone else in your office have done that for a whole lot less than $100 an hour? Almost certainly.
Now, I am not telling you to pay yourself $100 an hour. I sure don’t. If you made me put a number on my own time I’d say priceless, but I’m a little biased. The point holds either way. A lot of what fills your day is important, and even urgent, but it is not urgent for you specifically to be the one doing it.
Run a time audit
So do a time audit. Libby Delucien has a great one inside her book One Layer Deep, where you sit down and actually map where your hours are going. Once you can see it in front of you, do the math. Does it make sense for you to keep doing that thing? Or does it make more sense to hand it to a part-time person?
You don’t need a full office to start
Here’s the good news. With how many genuinely great remote specialists are out there now, you do not have to build a whole office to get relief. You can bring someone on to handle the phones, take messages, work through the routine questions (what are your hours, what areas do you service), manage spreadsheets and data, handle your social posting, all the things that quietly eat your day.
Even if you are the only person in your office right now, you can start peeling off the small stuff. If you found a remote specialist who could, at bare minimum, answer the phone and field the routine questions, how many hours would that hand back to you every week? That is time you can put toward the owner-level work that actually grows the thing.
Outsource beyond the front desk too
And it doesn’t stop at admin. Sometimes the highest-leverage help isn’t in your office at all. A really good bookkeeper. A fractional CFO, because a full-time CFO is expensive and worth every penny, just not at what most of us are bringing in yet, so you rent a slice of one instead. A tax strategist. People outside your four walls, covering things for less than a full staff seat would cost, and you get to support another small business while you’re at it.
And this counts in your real life too
Here’s the part that sounds ridiculous until you actually sit with it. Buying back your time is not only a business move. How much of your week goes to cleaning, cooking, grocery runs, putting gas in the car?
I know how it sounds to say you would pay someone to go put gas in your car. But every time I step away from what I’m doing to run an errand, I’m not just losing those minutes. I’m breaking my focus and climbing out of my flow to do it. That’s time I could be earning, or time I could be giving my family.
My days are full, same as yours. Meetings, fires, urgent calls, my office team and my technicians all needing a piece of me. So if I get home and still have to hit the grocery store, cook, put the groceries away, get gas, and go school shopping, when exactly am I supposed to pour back into myself? Into my family? That is the road to burnout. That is how you become a mess of an owner, and I say that as someone who has been the burnt-out owner.
I’m feeling it this week, honestly. We’re in the middle of building renovations, and even though we hired out the actual work (thank goodness, because I know people who have remodeled an entire building with their own two hands, and I do not know how they do it), living in the disorganized mess of it is draining me. It’s pulling from my family, my downtime, my friends, the things that actually refill me. Which is exactly the point.
So here’s what I want you to sit with
How could you start buying back your time? Business, personal, or both?
And if you’re not even sure where to start, reach out. Message me through Profit Pathways and I’m glad to talk you through it for a few minutes. Because it’s worth it. More importantly, you are worth it, and so is your sanity.
Talk tomorrow.
Jen